


the art of losing isn’t hard to master

by thekissofbees



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, Past Drug Use, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 11:51:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6656740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thekissofbees/pseuds/thekissofbees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack moves on. (More or less.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the art of losing isn’t hard to master

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes when you have a lot of work to get done, you write fic instead.

Afterwards, lying in bed together, passing a cigarette back and forth, Bitty asked him if he regretted it, the way everything had turned out with Kent. It was times like these that he was struck by how much of a child Eric still was.

Jack liked him. The way he insisted upon being called Bitty, the way his short hair curled around his ears, the way he hummed to himself in the bathroom. The way he baked, of course. Everything about Bitty was easy and straightforward. He could imagine spending the rest of his life with him, in this little apartment with the stove-top that smoked every time they turned it on and the windows that they somehow never got around to cleaning. He deserved better, but Jack would try his best. They’d raise a flock of small, grubby children together, maybe. Jack would remember to water the herbs in the windowsill and would buy some tulips for the table in the spring and Bitty would dance in the kitchen when an old blues song came on the radio one Sunday night. It would be like those photographs of his parents that he still had in a box somewhere, the ones that never had the decency to fade.

The best part about Bitty was that Jack didn’t love him.

Jack was just so, so tired. There were times after practice when walking up the stairs to the apartment seemed like such an insurmountable obstacle that upon completion he immediately collapsed on the couch, not to move again for several hours. His chest had been cut open and sewed shut so many times, and at some point someone had taken an ice cream scoop and removed all the important bits. He had loved so much and so hard for so many years, and not-loving Bitty was the best thing he had ever done.

He drank tea, as black as he could get it, and made Bitty toast in the morning and walked to the laundromat once a week with both their clothes and got rid of all of his photos of Kent Parson: Player of the Year (Age 10, Age 13, Age 16). He went to practice, and he traveled with the team, and he played decently. He got a lot of assists. He didn’t read the articles about how all of Jack Zimmermann’s passion seemed to be gone, and he didn’t read the articles about how the NHL had made Jack Zimmermann a more unselfish player.

Jack called his parents once a week. He visited children in the hospital. He stopped reading poetry altogether, and began an even heavier regimen of biographies of World War Two heroes than what he had read in college. He saw a therapist once every few months, for “maintenance.” He cut his cigarette habit down. His cardio improved from its already phenomenal level. He made vegetable stir-frys and occasionally considered drinking less.

“I don’t regret anything, ma chatte,” he said, stubbing out the cigarette in an empty mug on the bedside table.

“You loved him though, didn’t you?” Bitty wanted a heartbreaking story, wanted a broken romance to add the finishing touches to Jack’s tragic background.

Kent had taken all the air out of the world. Loving him was like being pulled under by the ocean. Choked, drowned, blinded—tumbled until he could no longer tell what direction was up, until the only things he could feel were the burning in his lungs and the churning water dragging him away. Every moment had felt like an end, and Jack was a clawing, scrambling animal, unable to escape. “We were very young.” Eventually, Jack had gone limp with defeat and the tide had pushed him back onto the shore. He had lain there since, bruised and shaking, breaths coming in and out in desperate gasps. “It was just a few years, anyway,” he muttered, finally.

Bitty nodded, his face serious. “I’m sorry you didn’t get more time together.”

After Jack had overdosed, he had spent weeks, months, years, imagining that one day Kent would call him and explain _why._ Why this had happened to them. He wasn’t sure what explanation would actually be sufficient, but he knew he wanted one anyway. Some days he thought that even if Kent had admitted that he didn’t know why it had happened, Jack would still take him back. They would move out to the countryside or to some big city in the States and Kent would be forever in his debt and Jack would never ever reproach him for any of it. He almost didn’t care that these plans didn’t include hockey.

He wallowed in these dreams of impossible futures, like pushing a thumb into an already broken bone. It was excruciating and caused such interestingly colored bruises. You had to become a connoisseur of pain, after a certain point.

He never imagined that Kent was innocent, not even in his most far-fetched fantasies. Never imagined that maybe it wasn’t Kent’s fault.

That was a good example of the problem, he thought drily. He believed that this thought made him remarkably self-aware. “I think everything’s worked out alright after all. Kent’s got his Cup, and I’m working on mine.” Jack hoped that Kent would have appreciated how callous this statement was. It might have made him laugh. “Besides, I’ve got you now.”

Jack looked around the bedroom. It was shockingly lived-in. There were pants thrown haphazardly on the back of a chair, one of Bitty’s bright shirts drying on the top of the dresser, and too many cups with the dregs of tea still left in the bottom scattered on random surfaces. A stranger might have thought that the people who lived here considered it home.

I could have been happy here, Jack thought to himself. Or maybe that was just another trick his mind had decided to play on him.

“I love you, you know,” Bitty said, his face soft and gentle and everything Kent’s wasn’t.

“I know.” He kissed him.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art." 
> 
> I'm on tumblr at thekissofbees, come say hi!


End file.
